Third Annual Rutgers Robotics Workshop Successfully Held on September 22, 2023

The Third Annual Rutgers Robotics Workshop was held on September 22, 2023, at 33 Livingston Ave., Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. This interdisciplinary event brings together faculty, students from three schools (School of Engineering, School of Arts and Science, Bloustein) as well as  industry representatives.  The workshop is part of the NSF National Research Traineeship SOCRATES (Socially Cognizant Robotics for a Technology Enhanced Society),  a cross-disciplinary training program aimed at establishing methods for effective collaboration among researchers from engineering, computer science, psychology, and public-policy and planning with the goal of designing socially-cognizant robotic systems. SOCRATES core faculty include Kristin Dana (PI, ECE), Clint Andrews (Bloustein), Kostas Bekris (CS), Jacob Feldman (Psychology), Jingang Yi (MAE), Pernille Hemmer (Psychology), Aaron Mazzeo (MAE), Hal Salzman (Bloustein), and Matthew Stone (CS).

The workshop began with opening remarks from Prabhas V. Moghe, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Rutgers. A morning panel was held on “Robots in the age of ChatGPT”. Graduate students from across five departments presented posters on their research during a poster session.  Undergraduate students also participated in the day’s activities. Industry Representatives from SRI, Latent AI, Siemens Healthineers participated in the panel discussion. Dean Stuart Shapiro gave a welcome address and also in the afternoon panel on “New Robot Technologies and the Social Impact”.  Prof. Ron Arkin from Georgia Tech gave the keynote address entitled “Civilized Collaboration: Ethical architectures for enforcing legal requirements and mediating social norms in Human-robot Interaction”. The workshop wrapped up with a tour of the CS Robotics Research Lab.

For more information on the SOCRATES NRT: https://robotics.rutgers.edu/